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Fermentation Atlas

Alcoholic drinks from India

Themsing (Monpa millet or barley beer)

golden, aromatic millet/barley beer extracted from a long-keeping solid mash. Made in 5 steps over 12 months – 3 years. The longest step, ferment packed in wooden containers, tightly covered, takes 12 months – 3 years (Shrivastava K 2012).

Key numbers
Main step12 months – 3 yearsSourced[SHRI2012]Ferment packed in wooden containers, tightly covered
Temperature100 °CReported[SHRI2012]Cook grain
DocumentedAlcoholic drinks12 months – 3 yearsMore alcoholic drinksMore from India

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedWhat goes in. No source gives amounts for this ferment.
finger millet (local name kongpu)
barley (local name bong)
or a mix of both
Starter: koji/qu/mold-starter (Monpa 'pham' tablets: glutinous rice ground with Solanum khasianum leaves (local name ichosu) plus 25–30 g old starter, fermented 2 days, shaped into 6–8 g tablets, sun-dried 15–20 days, stored in wooden boxes [SHRI2012b])

Total time across the recorded steps: 12 months – 3 years

Start
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100 °C

What changes: Millet or barley cooks in a pot

Step 1 of 5
Cook grain
Time
Not documented
Temperature
100 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Yeasts

Output: cooked millet or barley [SHRI2012].

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
grains become soft
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

none

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

Variants

  • Pipe extractiondrink sipped out through a ~1 cm pipe fitted at the bottom of the vessel [SHRI2012]
  • Basket percolationlukewarm water dripped through the mash in a perforated bamboo basket [SHRI2012]

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Documented only for the Monpa of Tawang district [SHRI2012]; also listed in [RAWAT2021] Table 1 (finger millet, Monpa).

  1. [SHRI2012] Shrivastava K., Greeshma A.G., Srivastava B. "Biotechnology in tradition: a process technology of alcoholic beverages practiced by different tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, North East India." Indian J. Traditional Knowledge 11(1):81–89, 2012. Survey of 21 tribes in 42 villages of 14 districts. Process flow charts read from the PDF figures, text and flow chart 4paper
  2. [SHRI2012b] Shrivastava K., Greeshma A.G., Srivastava B. "Biotechnology in tradition: methods of starter preparation for alcoholic beverages employed by different tribal communities of Arunachal Pradesh." IJTK 11(1):194–201, 2012, Monpa starter methodpaper
  3. [RAWAT2021] Rawat J.M., Pandey S., Debbarma P., Rawat B. "Preparation of alcoholic beverages by tribal communities in the Indian Himalayan Region: a review on traditional and ethnic consideration." Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 5:672411, 2021. Tables 1–2 list beverages, starters and starter plants by state and tribe, Table 1paper
  4. [FERMDB] FermDB (Bokulich lab, ETH Zurich), FermDB_data.tsv, CC BY 4.0. Rows used here mostly cite Tamang J.P. et al. 2020, "Fermented foods in a global age: East meets West", Compr. Rev. Food Sci. Food Saf. 19:184–217 (not open access, so read through FermDB), and Tamang, Thapa & Rai 1996 (J. Food Sci. Technol.), row 'Themsing'paper